Piece of the Action by Stephen Solomita Read Free Book Online Page A

its course. It was a homicide. ”
    “You finished, Sal?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Good. Now, I want to speak to you about my prospective son-in-law.”
    “Stan ‘The Man’ Moodrow? The hero?” Patero laughed softly, covering his mouth with his hand.
    “Shut up, Sal.” Pat Cohan’s voice demanded obedience. He waited until he got it, before continuing. “If you think what he did was nothing, boyo, you could always arrange to get in the ring with him. Maybe you could teach him a lesson.”
    Patero’s face reddened. Like most cops, he didn’t react well to having his courage challenged, but he couldn’t very well punch the shit out of Pat Cohan, he being a lousy detective and Patrick Cohan a full inspector. Besides, Pat Cohan wasn’t that far off the mark. Salvatore Patero would sooner have been assigned to the Bomb Squad than get in the ring with Stanley Moodrow.
    “Don’t take it the wrong way, Pat. I know Stanley’s got the balls of an elephant. Besides, I like the kid.”
    “That’s good to hear, boyo, because you’ll be seein’ a lot of him. Stanley’s gettin’ his gold shield tonight, though for the life of me, I can’t see why he wants it.” Pat Cohan had nothing but contempt for the “elite” Detective Division. They strutted through the precincts in their suits and overcoats like roosters in a barnyard, but they rarely had two dimes to rub together. You couldn’t blame young cops for being drawn to the Gold Shield, but the truth was that there was no money to be made from assignments to the Missing Persons Bureau or the Photographic Unit or the Crime Laboratory. The only potential money maker in the Detective Division was the Narcotics Bureau. Fifteen years earlier, when Pat Cohan was a mere precinct captain, heroin had been a minor part of the crime pantheon. Now, it was the scourge of the city.
    “What I want you to do, Sal,” he continued, “is show him the ropes. I want you to take him around with you.”
    “Look, Pat, I don’t give out assignments …”
    “He’ll be assigned to you. It’s already taken care of.”
    Patero shook his head. “You’re makin’ a mistake here. You oughta put the kid in a decent squad and let him work his way up. The way you wanna do it, he’s gonna be the most unpopular suit in the precinct.”
    “Stanley Moodrow’s going to marry my daughter. I don’t want him takin’ her back to some Lower East Side tenement after the honeymoon.” Pat Cohan’s voice was devoid of any Irish charm. “Darlin’ Kathleen” was his only child. His only surviving child. His son, Peter, had been lost in the waters off Omaha Beach. They hadn’t even found his body.
    “All right, Pat, I catch your drift. But I got my doubts that you’ll get what you’re after. The kid wants to be a detective. He wants to solve crimes, make arrests. It’s only natural.”
    Pat Cohan thought it over for a minute. There was more than a little truth in Patero’s argument. Stanley Moodrow was naive.
    “Boyo,” Cohan said, “you may be right, but the thing of it is that I’ve got a little problem. Stanley’s tough as nails. He’s also smart and ambitious, and I suppose that’s all to the good. But he doesn’t know anything about how the Department operates. I want him to find out before he marries my daughter.”
    Stanley Moodrow stood in the center of Pat Cohan’s living room, his left arm draped about the shoulders of his fiancée, Kathleen, and recited the details of his recent victory to several newly arrived guests. It was the fifth re-telling of the evening, but there was no way he could get out of it. The guests were all cops and they all outranked him.
    “Were you trying to get him to come after you? Was that a plan or a lucky break?” The cop standing in front of him (Moodrow couldn’t remember his name or his rank) was middle-aged and stubby. As he spoke, he pulled on the thoroughly chewed end of a long cigar, sending clouds of smoke into the champion’s